


aspect of elgar’nan, aspect of mythal

by greymahariel (acceptnosubstitutes)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Gen, Heavy Angst, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:29:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acceptnosubstitutes/pseuds/greymahariel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Corypheus, Lavellan meets Solas in the Fade. Turns out, they really <i>can’t</i> stay away from each other. Even when one of the two would really like to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	aspect of elgar’nan, aspect of mythal

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is what waking up at six am with Solas feels gets you, apparently. Idk, biromantic Solas? Or you could read it as gen.
> 
> Pretty much spoilery for the entire game. ESPECIALLY about Solas.

“You don’t visit,” Lavellan says, not bothering to turn around. Let him make the effort, if he even cares. “You don’t write. An elf would start to feel offended.”

The sound of that familiar, soft laugh makes his jaw clench.

“And we can’t have that, can we?”

One minute Lavellan is staring blankly across a field of grass, the next he’s _there_. Lavellan’s not even moved, but he’s there.

Solas.

Lavellan shrugs, walking closer. Solas watches him, eyes studying him a little too like a specimen for his tastes, but doesn’t move. Lets him closer.

“You left just when the party was getting good.”

Solas smiles. Faintly. Or the ghost of a smile.

“I remember Varric’s game of Wicked Grace. I would rather avoid ‘good,’ I think.”

Lavellan huffs an amused sigh, stopping in front of him. They’re within arm’s reach now, but the gulf between them has never felt wider. For a moment Lavellan studies Solas in return. He looks the same as he always did, somehow impeccable but approachable, when he wanted to be.

Lavellan wonders how long it took to perfect that particular mask.

The slap echoes, despite there being nothing but grass around for what seems like forever, stretching into the distance. Solas doesn’t even try to avoid it. But he doesn’t seem to react, either.

“That,” Lavellan says, tightly, always feeling like a _child_ in his presence, “is for lying to me, leaving without a word, and for saddling me with this shit.” 

He lifts his left hand, displaying the prominent glowing green gash there. Solas doesn’t look away from his eyes, holding his gaze evenly.

“Then you know, I take it?”

Lavellan laughs. A hollow sound.

“It’s a little hard to wrap my head around,” he admits, “well, a lot hard. But then, a lot of what I know to be true isn’t, is it?”

Finally, a flicker. Solas closes his eyes.

“If I had but the courage, I would have told you _much_.”

He startles, eyes snapping back open, staring down at the elf who’d suddenly surged forward and is...hugging him. With some force, but that is to be expected from this particular, little tempest.

“And that,” whispered, “that’s because I _missed_ you.”

Lavellan steps back. Some time passes between them with nothing but the wind for company.

“Let me go,” Solas says, “stop looking for me.”

“Let you go? You’re already gone. I don’t even. I don’t even know where we are.”

“You know it. At least, with the hundreds upon hundreds of trees, you would know it.”

Lavellan sighs. Predictable. Solas always had a twisted sense of symbolism.

“You brought me to a graveyard. That’s just, that’s a horrible first date, Solas.”

Solas looks at him, unmoved.

“You are here,” he says, slowly, “not as you remember the Emerald Graves, but as I do.”

It’s not quite a peace offering, but it is. Something.

“A little barren, don’t you think?”

Solas smiles.

“I have lived a long life.”

Lavellan nods, then shakes his head. But he doesn’t doubt it.

“Why did you bring me here?”

“I did no -”

But Lavellan interjects, as the storm often does. All that power and no guidance. That chaos. It is, Solas thinks, a familiar feeling.

“But you did,” Lavellan says, “because, you know what? I go to sleep every night, sometimes morning, depending on Bull’s mood - never mind. But I sleep. And I don’t always see you.”

“Perhaps I simply erase your mind after some visits and not others.”

Another pause. Lavellan squints at him, then bursts out laughing. It brings another, a more solid, though as shortly lived, smile to Solas’ face.

“Uh,” Lavellan says, still chuckling, shakes his head, “that was a little bit creepy. Just a bit.”

“Mmmm. I realized that, after the fact.”

Suddenly Lavellan turns away, looking at something off in the distance. Even though there’s nothing to see.

“Would you tell me,” he asks, quietly, “if you had?”

“I have many powers, lethallin. Mind control is not one of them.”

It’s not exactly reassuring, for some reason, but nothing Solas ever says is, truly. Not quite. But Lavellan turns back.

“So am I the one that needs to let go? Or...you?”

Solas shifts, lacing his hands behind his back. The movement is a response in and of itself.

“Both, I would assume.”

Like before, not a peace offering. But, closer.

“Solas, this mark. It’s binding? Like I’m bound to Mythal?”

Solas’ mouth moves in an expression Lavellan does not understand. Like he despises the concept, a binding, Lavellan’s will subject to his command. But also a _longing_ so deep it hits Lavellan like a physical blow.

“Unfortunately,” he agrees, an edge to his voice where there hadn’t been before.

“So? Order me to leave, then.”

“It doesn’t work that way. You enter the Fade like all the other dreamers. Nothing in my power could stop that.”

Lavellan cocks his head. “You know what I meant. You’re avoiding the question. Why?”

Solas inclines his head, turning it slowly to one side. Lavellan gets to him. He’s never understood quite why, but Solas, always just a little distant with everyone else despite appearances, that mask always there, has never seemed to manage it long with Lavellan.

He wonders if it pisses Solas off to no end. Rather hopes it does.

“I will not take away your will. _Never_.”

Lavellan blinks at the vehemence. “Even if you suffer for it?”

The other elf meets his gaze again, a yawning abyss of time there. Then gone. In a flicker.

“I have suffered a long time. Much. This,” another faint smile, “I would deserve it.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” Lavellan’s own anger makes Solas tilt his head, consider him from a new angle. “I’m tired of people suffering. Because of _me_.”

Ah.

“A misunderstanding,” Solas says, not even knowing why he needs to placate this particular elf, this _one_ , and not all the others, but doing it anyway, “I would suffer because of my nature.”

Lavellan sighs, but his anger deflates. “Same thing.”

“Most assuredly not.”

“There you go again,” Lavellan tsks, mirroring Solas’ arms behind his back pose, “assuming shit for me. We get attached. Always. Too much and too hard. Same thing.”

It’s a rather simplistic view of a complicated concept, but Solas finds himself nodding. Conceding to the point. It is...most frustrating, the way this mercurial elf affects him. Changes his moods. His thoughts. Haunts him wherever he goes.

Solas cannot leave Lavellan in the past, and not for lack of trying.

“You know,” Lavellan says, “since Corypheus...imploded, or whatever he did into the Fade, you wouldn’t believe how many farmers have come to me expecting me to know a thing about what needs to be done so they can go back to happily farming. Refugees whose houses aren’t going to rebuild themselves. So many dead, lost, or missing, I’m not sure everyone will ever be sorted out. People need to mourn, says Josephine, and they can’t if they’re always wondering. _What if_ …”

There’s a question buried in there somewhere, but Solas lets Lavellan get it out. For the life of him, he doesn’t know what it is, only that Lavellan will surprise him.

“Will you ever come home?”

Home.

“I have none,” Solas says.

He pretends that doesn’t sting.

“Of course you do,” says Lavellan. The reverse, now assuming things for Solas.

“Oh?”

“Yes,” Lavellan is firm, definitively nodding, “at Skyhold. With the others. With...me.” 

Surprising, only how it shouldn’t surprise Solas, that he’s done it again. Managed to move him when Solas thought nothing ever would again.

“Do you know what you invite into your home?”

Lavellan crosses his arms, hand under his chin like he’s thinking quite hard.

“Well, let’s see,” he ticks off the points as he goes, “he has this habit of turning everything to ice. He’s annoying, but in that way that makes it impossible to ignore him. He never seems to be able to see what’s right in front of him, but I could say that about a lot of people. Oh, and I’m pretty sure he sheds on the rugs, but that’s okay. They’re Orlesian.”

Impossible. 

Solas shakes his head, laughs despite himself.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“So come home? Sometime? It doesn’t have to be now. Or for years. Just tell me I’ll see you again, in person.”

Lavellan sounds subdued, helpless like he should never feel. 

He united an entire world, disparate nations, nobles who would like nothing more than to stab each other in the back, races who had been doing that for centuries (and still were), commanded an army, bonded with a dragon, defeated an ancient Tevinter magister who turned the Golden City black, was the second mortal, metaphorically speaking, to physically enter the Fade successfully, and found himself bound to the will of not one, but two, ancient beings he did not even know were far more bound to him than the reverse.

And that barely scratched the surface. Elijah Lavellan was a storm. A force of nature. Something Solas had long since given up trying to control. Given up trying to resist, even longer. He was...indescribable.

Quite frankly, like nothing Solas has ever seen before.

Always changing, forgoing anything that might pin him down, that might make it easier to, if not ignore him, than at least lessen his chaos on Solas’ heart. But there is a certain irony, to that, Solas supposes.

And he doesn’t even _know_. 

It’s what drives Solas toward him, he will think, later, his footsteps not even making a sound among the soft grass. Lavellan starts when Solas takes his hand, surprised for once himself, and they are always doing that, aren’t they? 

Reversing each other. Revolving around each other.

Lavellan doesn’t resist being pulled forward, the arm around his waist, the slight brush of a mouth against his own.

“Come home to me,” Lavellan pleads, “Come home _whole_.”

“Now,” whispered, “wake up.”

The field melts around him, fading away long before Solas ever opens his eyes. He observes the small thread of water that trails down his face from a detached mindset. It plummets to the ground and it…

He hurts. Again.

_What do you want?_

The voice surrounds him, that familiarity, which is a comfort he should not have. Mythal should not have…

Just like Solas should have stayed far, far away from Elijah Lavellan.

But it’s a little too late for that now.

“What I want is irrelevant. I do this _for_ him. For all of them. Why can’t he see that? Why can’t I stay away?”

_Not what you think, Fen’Harel. What you feel._

“What I feel?” A sharp intake of breath. “Lavellan feels like home. No, he is home. That is why I should not have…”

_What do you want? After?_

“There is no after for me, Mythal. You know that.”

_If there was?_

What’s the point of wondering? Of guessing? Of longing? It just _hurts_.

But…

“What I want...I would like to return. To go home.”

But it’s impossible.


End file.
